'Vitamin Deficiency'...

♪ We are Flintstone kids, ten million strong, and grow-ing ♪
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHRKHNZLebY

That decades old advertising jingle for children's vitamins popped into my head yesterday, as is my wont. Random phrases of music flit about in there like quarter-note moths nearly all the time.

This particular jingle came out in '88. ( thank you, You Tube LOL ) Expecting my first baby, anticipating his arrival as my twin nephews were born, I lived in a constant state of baby-wonder.

24 years later, we await an election that has been fodder for vehemence, vitriol, and caused lost family relationships and friendships over ideological disparities. The kids in the target audience for that commercial, aged 3-10,  now have mortgages and babies and kids in elementary school.

Seems to me that we might be suffering from some sort of ideological 'vitamin deficiency'.

One can consume more than enough calories from the vast offerings available every day at the supermarket and eating establishments -- but how many of us hit the target for the vitamins and minerals we need without taking a supplement? A small percentage, perhaps.

The land of plenty hath produced a collective population of 'overfed malnutrition-ed patriots'. We've become consumers of our leaders as much as they have become consumers of their constituents, instead of leaders and supporters.

We vote for the 'brand' we prefer, the packaging, the promised results advertised, instead of sticking to healthier choices. Just as fast food clogs our arteries and raises our blood pressure, staunchly defending a candidate along party lines clogs our thinking and raises our collective ignorance.

Madison Avenue has lulled us into a marketer's dream state, where we are swayed by slick phrases and    glossy images...

... perhaps it's time for a more steady 'diet' where we get the political nutrition we need to keep this nation at full strength, and not simply what seems appealing.

Stormy Weather ♪

"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather..." We set out across the prairie yesterday as storms clouds gained strength. I braced myself for another rainy route to Lubbock... and halfway there, we drove beyond the storm. Hooray!!

Three hours later, under sunny skies and a fresh breeze, we got texts from home. "floods everywhere big rain tornado warning in Henrietta" YIKES. I almost felt guilty...and worried about my puppy-girl home alone with her skittish self on a thunderous day. 

Then my son and his fellow Matador Singers walked out to the 50-yard line and sang the National Anthem, and we cheered and hollered, and then the game went on cheerfully under sunny skies. Thousands of people whooped and hollered as Texas Tech University trounced their West Virginia U opponents, 49-14. What a glorious day! Sunny skies, happy people, unity, celebration. 

We drove home in the dark several hours later across the caprock, watching a "popcorn" lightning show for three and half hours. Not a second! between lightning strikes, all the way home. Somewhere, out there, a storm still raged.

This morning, while the birds sang and the breeze ruffled the freshly washed fall leaves,  two trees with huge limbs fallen partially blocked a street not far from our home. The sun shone on the fallen limbs, and the gaping gashes where they ripped from the trunks, dry streets bearing no other evidence of severe weather. 

Someone will have surgery this Thursday, a mastectomy of yet-undetermined severity. The sun will shine that day and the next day, but when she wakes up, she will be as the trees. Bits missing, gashes where smooth skin once lived, clean-up yet to be done. Her husband will do the delicate dance between helping her keep her chin up, while at once  journeying with her through a grieving process that all cancer survivors do. The days will be stormy. The sun will keep shining. 

Another person, much closer to me, will celebrate his 83rd birthday that same day. He'll be praying for her, that morning on his walk, since we share our prayer concerns as a father and daughter would, even though we are third cousins. HA Birthday cake and family phone calls with birthday greetings and blessings will fill the rest of the day, and the sun will keep shining. 

The yin and yan of this life on earth. Surgery and birthday cake, storms and sun, all at once. 

This precious life.  I believe in a God who created us in His own image, and I believe that He is an emotional God, else we would not have the feelings we do. Joy, sorrow, fear, courage...reflections of a Creator's own heart. We can mark all the days as good, surgery, celebrations, storms, sunshine, even if we don't smile -- or if we don't cry. 

All days, from the heart of a Father who loves and looks after us, in the dark on a road through the caprock, in an operating room ( and the aftermath), on a day celebrating the joy that beloved ones bring to their beloved. 

Someone recently mentioned to me that they'd rather read the happy things I write, it's their favorite style of mine. 

I admit, I love to report happy news. I wish I could always report happy news. I suppose I could, and eschew the unpleasantries of Life that makes us cry. Like cancer. Losing loved ones. Misfortunes. That person would probably prefer that I did. 

There are days to take stock of joy and days to pray over worries. I take the words of Christ to heart. " You will have trouble on this earth..but take heart. I have overcome the world." Remembering that gives me the ability to experience the emotions that God bestows, in response to circumstance. Even Jesus cried when Lazarus was dead, though He knew He would bring him out of the tomb, and Jesus celebrated at weddings. 

While we have trouble on this earth, we live from cake to cake, football game to football game, storm to storm. No matter how you look at it, win or lose, broken tree limbs or sunshine, we live. We live. What happens along the way is where we have time to choose how to live. :-) 

The sun will keep shining. He has overcome the world...

Daughters...

The Listening Post arrives accompanied with a John Mayer soundtrack today. Tune in, comment anonymously if desired, and thanks for reading my musings. :-) 

Last evening, after finishing the second helping of a dinner which my 20-something half-sister efficiently shopped for, whipped up, and served, all with with great grace and style (two nights in a row) -- she dozed on the sofa while her 20-something nephew ( my son ) and his girlfriend followed suit on the other couch and the living room carpet. Not long after that, I got on the phone to my oldest 20-something "daughter-by-osmosis" in the midst of a family crisis, and connected with her. In addition to the girlfriend, I have four half-sisters and a sister-in-law ( to their brother ), a quintet of "daughters-by-osmosis", and a daughter-in-law-to-be all in their 20's. I am surrounded by young women waiting to experience life. (I mostly live vicariously through them and make sure they don't turn out anything like me. ;-P )

While we were apart for roughly three decades, my childhood-crush-turned-Life-Love Jonathan became the proud father of five tow-headed girls -- and a equally adorable junior edition of himself. Over the years, as I read his mother's Christmas letters, I pictured his world of Barbies, My Little Pony, and and a endless collection of hair bows in contrast to my existence -- living amongst a plethora of Legos (which seemed to reproduce) and little boys constantly leaping couches like Power Rangers. It's good he had the girls, and not me. He's a very practical, calm, thoughtful, light-hearted person -- exactly what silly girls need in a daddy, and also what the one boy in the sea of Barbies needs in a dad. HA!

I was/am/will always be grateful that I never had daughters. My own existence as one was fraught with emotional peril and battles for survival...and the in-your-face-affection-and-activity of little boys and young men contained far fewer hormonal land mines than the ones I managed to detonate ( or get thrown onto) during my years as a young girl. Odd girl out in a trio of sisters, I never wanted a daughter to undergo the odd-girl-out experience, or suffer under my mostly-hysterical young adult female viewpoint. 

For, although I was a daddy's girl and very secure in that realm, just as I was emerging into the tenuous world of young womanhood (the years when you want your daddy around to measure your latest heartthrob against) the professor/leader/wonderful Daddy I knew regressed into the teenager he'd never allowed himself to be -- and switched gears and families. As a young bride-to-be, I watched as he then literally ran off to another country to begin anew. 

It turns out it was the best for all of us first-edition kids, because he degenerated into something that had no resemblance to the man we knew as the head of our household. The infrequent worst days with us became the norm for the second-edition. Fortunately for them, they spent their childhood in Israel, where there isn't time for nonsense (with the gas masks in the living room and the automatic weapons next to the bed) and so they all survived with the (residual formerly British-occupied Palestine) tradition of oh-well-on-we-go resolve. At least on the surface. 

I personally think we humans, especially daughters, tend to project how we perceive our parents onto the image of God that we have. A loving, caring, involved dad gives the mother security in raising the young ones as well, and that fosters thoughts of a loving, caring, involved Creator in our lives. An emotionally or physically unavailable set of parents fosters the adverse.

A popular song came out a few years back, by the artist John Mayer. The opening lines sum this thought up, quite poetically:

I know a girl • She puts the color inside of my world • But she's just like a maze

Where all of the walls all continually change

And I've done all I can • To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands • Now I'm starting to see

Maybe it's got nothing to do with me

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

On the whole, my father was NOT good to his daughters (or his sons ) -- or either of his wives. The early years were the best... and as it turns out, I was as much of a mess as he, for a very long time. 

"...just like a maze, where all of the walls all continually change..." Still am, occasionally, except the walls only change color now, not shape, with the seasons. God's love for me has built sturdy walls that hold in Jonathan's love and light and laughter -- and mostly block anything unwanted, while we continue the journey we started all those years ago, with all these wonderful 20-somethings in our hearts and lives. 

Here you go, kids. Sage advice, from a pop artist. Sage advice. 

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

 

♪Try to remember the kind of September...♪

"♪Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September♪ When grass was green and grain was yellow.
♪Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Darla Eichmann. I think that's how you spelled her name. HA She was the bubbly blonde female lead in Poly High's performance of "The Fantasticks", and for the life of me I can't remember who the male lead was... but this tune has stayed in my heart since middle school. A lovely, lilting, echoing air...a musical version of the breeze currently ruffling the leaves of the trees today.

Try to remember a different September than the one we remember today... a day where my friends Ann and Eva's husbands and my own personal Hurricane (then-spouse )  got locked down at Sheppard Air Force Base... a day when my brother Kirk's son sat on a military aircraft for hours on a tarmac, delayed for deployment because of the Towers' tragedy... a day when my little sister Alyson went into labor... a day when my three young sons, shown here, were on home school while we 'visited' Wichita Falls.

It's hard to remember "when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow..." as Tom Jones wrote in those lilting lyrics. Of course we wept, but not as a nation in mourning...this day in 2001 we wept collectively.

On a lighter note, remember that September has always had the power to make children cry, with the return to school. HA Just trying to lighten the mood. Every September has it's glories and it's sorrows. September 2001? Forever tinged with smoke and flames and loss and disbelief and horror, much like December 1941. 

Today try to balance those memories with the days 'when grass was green and grain was yellow...'. Most of us are grateful for a nation that rises from smoke and flames and loss with a renewed spirit. 

No matter what you remember about this date, remember that we are but passers-by in the annals of time, and that we cannot perpetually live in fear, lest we let the enemies of the past and present retain their power over us. We must live simply, and simply live, regardless of circumstance -- tragedy or victory. 

"♪Try to remember when life was so tender ♪That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Ain't No Valley Low Enough..♪

 Head and shoulders stuck in a hallway cupboard, paint roller in hand, the opening strains of Diana Ross and the Supremes "aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah" drifted through the living room of the new house my then-husband and I had bought, with the help of my mother for a down payment. All of my family had paint rollers in hand, too, so we could cover up the ghastly remnants of 80's color schemes in a 1954-era tract house. It was a paint party.

I started singing in the cupboard, with Diana. "Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, nothin' can keep me, keep me from yoooou!! aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah aaaaah ah ahhhh ah aaaaahh ah ahhhh ah ooohhh oooo oo mm mm"

A mountain-top experience that day, back in 1987. Still a newlywed,  surrounded and supported by my family, proud of ourselves that we could qualify to buy a home at 23 and 21. Those were the days. 

Been mostly valleys since then. HA Of course raising the boys included many mountain-top moments -- end-of-the-year awards assemblies, watching them grow into good men who could pick a tune or a baseball out of the air effortlessly, watching them graduate high school, get promoted at work, go to college. Until Jonathan came back into my life, after 35 years, the mountain-tops consisted mostly of the boys' successes, with the occasional spiritual breakthrough and a few church concerts when I could sing my heart out, like that day in the hall cupboard. 

Lately my two best girl-friends, both of who have known me for more than 25 years and still want to be my friend ( who knew??) have been popping in and out of my life long-distance and I in theirs. 

We don't have big fantastic experiences together like you see in the TV commercials, all glam and flash...just heart-to-hearts punctuated with more than a few explosive laughs at ourselves and others. Same with many my childhood friends, now on Facebook but close in heart after years of Life, Love, Divorces, Deaths, and Other Fortunes and Misfortunes. We check in on each other and keep each other's chins up in ways that only lifetime friends can do.

I've noticed a similarity in the way Protestantism and Catholicism function. ( Certainly at the time of the Reformation a new order deemed necessary, but in the 500 years since Luther nailed his theses to the doors, the Protestant church has become all about the mountain-top.) Deep, meaningful services, lively music, ongoing programs, and "worship opportunities" designed to entice the masses and save souls for Christ, at least, all those not Catholic...while the Mass is the same, for everyone, every day, every where. One can be in Arizona or Ecuador, and the readings and the litany remains constant. Boring, maybe for those seeking that youth rally/mountain-top/campfire experience that makes you cry  -- or comforting, familiar, restoring, like taking a walk or drinking water. The meaningful nature of the Mass comes from within, not on a video screen...

Faith isn't only dancing on the mountain tops, singing and twirling in the breeze like Julie Andrews. 

Faith mostly grows in the valleys, where the shadows gather and the winds blow colder and the floods rush through, and you survive being pummeled by the elements. You can't stay on the summit very long. All the water runs downhill...

Faith isn't a noun. It's not about the Presbyterian faith, or the Catholic faith, or the Jewish faith. 

Faith is a verb, a response to knowing that you are the same to God whether in the Alpine meadow or in the valley of the shadow of death, no matter what you've done or where you've been. 

Faith sings "Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough, nothin' can keep me keep me from You!" when you are huddled against a rock at the bottom of a gorge or surveying a majestic vista. 

Faith sings.  

Listing, Gently, On a Mother Sea

Brett posted a photo of his dorm room at Texas Tech last night with the caption, 'All moved in'. He has always settled into a new place with lightning speed. 
     In January, when we moved here to "The Manor", he had his room put together before the second load of lamps, furniture, and paraphernalia had even arrived from across town. 
     Three years ago, while Randall and I were lugging Craig's belongings to his freshman dorm (which smelled strongly of boy-socks), Brett called from The Cottage, where we lived at that time. " Mom, uh, can I have Craig's room?"  Balancing a laundry basket filled with tip-able non-laundry items in one arm, and cradling the phone to my neck while the other toted a zippered bag with new bedding in it, I said, "Sure. Craig can sleep in your old room when he comes home for the weekend." ( It's not as hard-hearted as you'd think. Craig stripped his room bare three days before HE GRADUATED from high school...so...) But before Rand and I got back from OKC, that day, Brett had moved into the new room and moved all of the Remnants of Craig to the new Spare Oom. Holy cow. 
     Today I am listing. Not making lists. Listing, like a ship on the water. One side to the other. 
      Nostalgic, a little wistful for my youngest's childhood discarded for new adventures. 
      Re-arranging furniture ( Randall did that part before he went to work), shifting books around, mixing Jonathan's large collection of sci-fi, military, childhood classics - Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ian Fleming -- and political diatribes with my own mix of mostly-chick-lit, Christian, political diatribes, and childhood classics -- Carolyn Keene, C.S. Lewis, and E.B. White -- helps keep my mind off of the empty room at the end of the hall and the new life unfurling eleven stories above Texas Tech University. 
     Even though I'm listing today, I'm oh-so-ready for a new phase of life.
     One where I am no longer a cancer patient or a surgery patient in interminable recovery, but one like Brett's where some stuff gets left behind and the important stuff gets taken on ahead.
     One where Jon and I pick up the reins of couples that have been together all this time and now can just be themselves without the concerns of parents concerned about their children making it to adulthood. Not that we have anything to be concerned about. 
     All nine of our kids are awesome. Courtney and Craig and Brett and Hope have left their respective nests. Carianne would have long ago (for somewhere quiet and full of books) but she has one more school year of hanging out with her twin siblings, Laura and Jack, until they graduate. Randall will get his own place when I get on my feet again -- and Samantha will, too, now that she has finished Phase 1 of her education. Plus, we'll have ten official kids when Craig and Emily get hitched the week before the twins' graduation! 
     So, today -- as I dust shelves and remember the Ian Fleming collection from a long-ago summer where Jonathan and I, two tow-headed kids had our noses in books while everyone else was outside eating watermelon -- I'm listing. 
     No storms. Just trying to get my sea legs steady while I wait to see what course I take next. 

If you've ever felt like you were adrift, or if you feel like it now, you can leave an anonymous comment at the bottom of my blog page. The Listening Post is open...
   
     
      
    
   

To beast or not to beast... that is the question.

The Listening Post is open… sorry I’ve been away for a bit.

                                    To beast or not to beast... that is the question. :-P

Ever get caught multi-tasking when you're supposed to be focused? 

While studying the hundreds of hues in the stained glass window depicting Saint Peter, right there next to my pew, I got caught up in the curves and colors and the creation of the art and the life and times of the saint himself. Good grief. Time to tune in. Through the echoes of “Taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord”, which I had just finished singing with the congregation, I hear the priest musing during his homily, “What if tomorrow no numbers existed? We wouldn't be able to survive. We couldn't measure time, we’d not be able to see what was in our bank account, how much to pay at the grocery store, etc.

Numbers seem to exist – but have you ever seen the number one? The actual number one? You’ve seen  written versions of it, pennies which representation one sent, etc., but you can’t truly see one, nor can you taste it, hear it, smell it. Feel it. It just is." 

Numbers are elusive. We experience them, but their abstract, intangible selves are not in our realm.

So it is with love. You can see it in someone’s eyes, feel it in their touch, hear it in their voice, but it is not to be defined either, only represented by human gestures. It’s elusive, but we know it.

So it is with God, who is love. God cannot be defined or quantified or explained. He just is.  People spend a lot of time trying to discredit the existence of God and use logic to dispel Christianity. They are somewhat correct. Logic has no place in love. I’ve said it before. Logic has no place in the night when a newborn is crying and you cuddle and comfort them through bleary eyes. Logic has no place in a marriage, where two completely different individuals share one life. Logic has no place in forgiveness, which is the expression of love. It makes no sense to continue to actively love someone who makes spikes in the seismograph of your life, and it’s easier to say, “I can’t deal with you” than to seek different ways to be in relationship.

Love makes us human. The priest this morning reminded us that we are animals with a soul. He even  admitted that he has often been a dirtbag, brushing people off, logically 'focusing on the task at hand" -- or conversely, aiming for the jugular to prove a point. ( D'Oh! When did start tailing me? Guilty as charged.) If we do not love, and hurt others in our own pain -- or worse, turn away from others who have hurt us or caused turmoil for us, we are merely beasts. 

We can taste and see the goodness of the Lord, which smells like, tastes like, feels like, sounds like, and looks like forgiveness and compassion – or we can live within our self-imposed boundaries, eliminating anything we can’t explain or control. Tidy up a bit to make ourselves feel like a better person. Seems like it might get a little stuffy in there… I can testify to that. Sigh.

Do you need to forgive someone? Be forgiven?? Forgive yourself? All comments are private and anonymous, when you click on the comment box at the bottom of the link.

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